WSJ. Magazine February 2014: The Columnists

WSJ. asks six luminaries, including Miss Piggy and Ali MacGraw, to weigh in on a single topic. This month: Love

Jan. 21, 2014 12:26 p.m. ET

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Baz Luhrmann

Baz Luhrmann

"Romantic love can be dangerous. Look at Romeo and Juliet. It was originally written as a cautionary tale: When kids fall in love, it can end tragically. It's about kids who are experiencing love hormonally for the first time. You throw in a generational conflict and everybody's walking around with swords, it's inevitable that you'll end up with dead children. People invade countries over love. Despots—Alexander the Great, Napoleon—rampaged throughout the world because the more love they got, the less they felt they had. If you think of the great love stories—Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Gatsby—none of them end with the boy and girl kissing and riding off into the sunset. They all share a fundamental impossibility. It can never be, but wasn't it grand to experience? Because the one thing about intense romantic love is, good or bad, you feel very, very alive."

—Luhrmann is a film director.

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Elaine Stritch

Elaine Stritch

"I definitely think of myself as a romantic—without a doubt in the world. I can't believe how romantic I am. It's terrifying! When I saw Gone with the Wind, I didn't get out of bed for two days. And Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights? That's my idea of romance. And I've had love: Marlon Brando; JFK; Gig Young. I dated them all, but I had such respect for myself. I wanted to hold on to Elaine. At least until I met my late husband, John Bay. It was the first time I felt like, I don't know whether I'm in love or not, but I want to get in his pocket and I want him to take me home. I never talked about sex because I didn't know what the hell that was, but I knew I wanted to be in John's pocket. Being in love is being in somebody's pocket."

—Stritch is an actress and singer and the subject of the documentary Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me, out this month.

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Jacques Torres

Jacques Torres

"Romance is a part of the history of chocolate. In the time of the Aztecs, cacao beans were a currency, and in their culture they were believed to have a special power. And in fact, your brain creates a chemical when you're in love that makes you feel good, and that chemical is in chocolate as well. Back then they consumed chocolate as a drink: They'd take it before going to work to give them energy, or men would drink it before their first night with their new wives. And when chocolate came to Europe, those mystic stories came with it. Even if you go back to the animal kingdom, looking at monkeys, you see the male going to get sweet foods for the female to win her over. So I think it's even a bit of an animal instinct: I'm going to give something good to my loved one and she's going to love me more for it. It's no surprise that Valentine's Day is our busiest day of the year."

—Torres is a pastry chef and the founder of Jacques Torres Chocolate.

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Miss Piggy

Miss Piggy

"Love is when you give yourself totally to another person (or, in moi's case, a frog) and they return the favor—and throw in some expensive jewelry. That said, the very first time I fell in love was when I got my first mirror. I knew that the face looking back at me was one that would woo the world and, with a little Botox, never change. But it's Kermie who truly completes moi. As the saying goes: He had me at 'Hi ho!' Why do I find him so attractive? Look at those spindly arms and legs, that silly little smile, those googly eyes! How could you not fall in love with him? I once went all the way to the Great Swamp in New Jersey to track down Kermit. Wooing is a part of love. I love to woo. I love to be wooed! And sometimes I just like to say the word 'Woo!' My tricks and tips for seduction are easy: I simply hold Kermie tenderly in my arms—and don't let go."

—Miss Piggy appears in Muppets Most Wanted, opening in March.

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RZA

RZA

"Love is something I've always thought of as the highest elevation of understanding, something that has no conditions to it. Understanding always leads to love. If you love somebody, try to understand them. You may have a couple who love each other, but they don't understand each other. And then the love doesn't live there. Love is a descendent of religion and of reality. It's an equation, like molecules or atoms that combine with other elements. There are many ways to reach that equation, many different expressions of it. The love for your father is different from the love for your wife, or the brotherly love of the Wu-Tang Clan. My love for music has become part of my daily life. There's some things your body has to do every day, and music has become a bodily necessity for me: Every day, I've got to get my fix."

—RZA is a musician, actor, director and the lead producer of the Wu-Tang Clan.

ENLARGE

Ali MacGraw

Ali MacGraw

"I've found that love resonates enormously differently with age. For many of us, the young version is just the tip of the iceberg. It's all wrapped up with heat and excitement, and enough trashy literature and TV to completely shortchange the bigger picture of what it means with time. The definition for me has become the ability to be nonjudgmentally, compassionately, forgivingly connected to others. It's like the great John Lennon song 'All You Need Is Love.' Damn right. To live in the possibility of behaving toward all living things with love is going to determine our survival as a planet. But let me be clear: The early version—the fall off a cliff, what is he thinking, when is he going to call feeling—is really fun. Some of us never let go of wanting a hit of that. Love is bigger than that, but it's not instead of that. And it's a piece without which life is a little grayer."

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